So he goes off to fly around the temple! With double-speed, which is fun.

Anything of note in the surrounding area?

He's over a small island, with a tall hill in the centre where the temple is located. There are thousand-year-old ruins of ancient machina cities scattered here and there, but the only active settlement is a village of huts near the beach. There are some reconstruction efforts being made, presumably where Sin attacked, and given the state of destruction and debris Sin probably destroyed half the settlement.

… Oh how lovely.

Unfortunately he is not trained in architectural stuff, though he knows some basic stuff, so he wouldn't be able to recreate the buildings himself. He might be able to help out with some resource issues, though, if they'd want that, so he'll scout around a bit more and then go see Tidus and let him know he plans on that.

People stare at the weird creature circling the island.

When he returns, Tidus has a half-sphere in his hands. "I got a sphere of what the village and the temple steps used to look like, maybe you can help fix things?"

"Sure," he says. "Is this a magic thing that's going to knowledge-dump it, or will it just do a display of it, or…? And afterwards I'm probably gonna go try helping with the reconstruction near the sea."

"Display, you just gotta look at it and it'll show you stuff."

He nods and takes it!

The sphere shows the island, recorded in first-person as someone examined the island and city. If Theo focuses on what he's actually seeing, it's a grainy blueish hologram floating above the sphere; if he just lets himself get distracted by what the sphere's showing, however, it starts feeling like he's actually there, in high definition and full colour.

That's slightly weird.

He goes down to the bits of the steps and the village that need repairing, though – offers to take Tidus with if he wants – and starts fixing things up. Also tests his new strength a bit, moving things around, seeing if it's at all noticeably easier.

The strength difference is slight enough that it could plausibly be wishful thinking.

Tidus goes with to help explain him and stuff, and the villagers are surprised but welcome the aid.

Well, he might see if he can help get more spheres, in that case, because having a non-plausibly-wishful-thinking upgrade to his strength would be useful.

Tidus in fact has several! They're really really not hard to come by.

If Tidus is okay handing them out to the strange humanoid with weird magic powers, then the strange humanoid will not object! (He will be thankful instead.)

Sure, here he goes.

...and then Theo will find he can't actually use them.

"How long does it take to get new slots? I think you said something about needing to make space for the spheres. Because these aren't going."

"Oh right yeah. It's not about time, you gotta use the stuff you get with spheres and get your soul used to it to get more."

"So– try carrying a bunch of heavy things?"

"Yeah. Most people use it in battle though."

"The strength? What, by punching people?"

"No, by killing fiends."

"… Punching fiends?" he asks. "That plant didn't seem like it'd take too kindly to that. And it seemed kinda like if anyone tried it there they might have died, unless there are smaller fiends?"

"The Sinspawn was pretty big, yeah, but that's why I use my sword." He gestures towards the shiny blue sword made of solid water behind his back.

"I still have no idea how any of this magic works – spheres appear when you kill some fiends, or you get those pyreflies and then you do something to them to get spheres, so do you also just, like, shove pyreflies into the water and it somehow sticks together, or do you get a sphere for it first, and are spheres made after people do the slow route for magic, or do you not know because you're new to intense magic use, or…?"

"Yeah, don't really know."

He nods and continues cleaning stuff up.